Conventionally, it is known to constitute part of a roof of an automobile with a glass panel to give an open-air feel to the passenger compartment. Some of such automobiles with the so-called glass sunroof are provided with a plurality of sunshade panels that are slidable in the fore-and-aft direction of the vehicle beneath the glass panel to control the amount of sunlight entering the passenger compartment.
An exemplary one of such sunshade devices comprises three sunshade panels, where the right and left side edges of each panel are supported by a corresponding one of three pairs of guide rails positioned at different heights, and an engagement and disengagement mechanism is provided between end portions of fore-and-aft adjoining panels so that the three panels can be selectively closed and opened in a manner similar to a double sliding door by driving the forefront sunshade panel forwardly and rearwardly (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (kokai) No. 2004-249851, for example).
In this conventional sunshade device, a step is formed between fore-and-aft adjoining panels in the fully closed state due to the difference in height of the panel positions, whereby deteriorating the appearance. Further, this device uses the three guide rail pairs for slidably guiding the three individual panels, and this makes it difficult to simultaneously achieve both of reduction in the total vehicle height and increase in the headroom of the passenger compartment because the sunshade device requires an amount of accumulated thickness of the three guide rail pairs over an entire length of the movable range of the forefront panel.
In order to deal with such a problem, it is proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (kokai) No. 5-24437 to provide a sunshade device having front and rear sunshade panels which are slidably supported by the same guide rail pair.
In the sunshade device disclosed in JPA No. 5-24437, the front and rear sunshade panels are stored in a rear portion of the vehicle with the front panel being stacked over the rear panel in a fully open state, and the sunshade panels are drawn out in the forward direction to fully close the roof opening. In order to achieve this, a power source is connected to the front panel to drive the front panel, and the rear panel is selectively linked to the front panel to follow the move of the front panel.
In JPA No. 5-24437, the linkage mechanism for linking the sunshade panels comprises a projection provided to a rear end portion of the front panel (drive panel) and a hole defined in a front end portion of the rear panel (follower panel) so that the projection of the front panel can engage the hole of the rear panel to link these sunshade panels. It should be noted that the number of the follower panels can be more than one and in such a case, adjoining follower panels can be linked to each other so that one panel can follow the other (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 62-68126, for example).
In the fully open state, the panels are stacked together in a stored state to provide a wide opening. In order to achieve the stacking of the front and rear panels in the stored state, in JPA No. 5-24437, each sunshade panel is provided with a pair of right and left front slide shoes (sliders) and a pair of right and left rear slide shoes, and these slide shoes are slidably received by the corresponding one of the pair of right and left guide rails. Further, each guide rail is formed with a front opening and a rear opening in its rear portion so that when the front slide shoe and the rear slide shoe of the rear sunshade panel are aligned with the front opening and the rear opening of the guide rail, respectively, the front and rear slide shoes of the rear panel can be pushed downward through the front and rear opening of the guide rail against an upward urging means (spring) into the respective slide shoe storing rooms to whereby move the rear panel down to the stored position which is provided below the rear portion of the guide rails. The force for pushing down the rear panel against the spring force is provided by the rearwardly driven front panel overriding the rear panel.
In JPA No. 5-24437, the front and rear slide shoes of each panel are received by the same guide rail (i.e., the left front and rear slide shoes are received by the left guide rail while the right front and rear slide shoes are received by the right guide rail), and this can create a problem that the rear slide shoe of the rear panel can inadvertently fall into the front opening formed in each guide rail. In order to solve such a problem, in JPA No. 5-24437, the front opening of the guide rail is provided with a shorter length than the rear opening and correspondingly, the front slide shoe of the rear panel is provided with a shorter length than the rear slide shoe. However, this still cannot completely eliminate the possibility that the movement of the rear slide shoe can be unfavorably interfered by the front opening of the guide rail and thus the sliding move of the rear slide panel can be hindered when there are oscillations or the like during travel of the vehicle.
Further, in the above sunshade device, it is desired to ensure that the slide shoes can be stored into the corresponding slide shoe storing rooms smoothly and reliably without requiring complicated structure therefor.